Carsten Peter: Inside the Nyiragongo Volcano

A fearless explorer and photographer, Carsten Peter takes a daring journey to capture images of the largest lava lake on Earth.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

Voiceover: Nyiragongo is a real
dangerous volcano. 2 million people living around there could
suffocate of carbon dioxide, but in the night you realize there's
more behind that curtain of steam and organic smoke. For me there
were no doubts I wanted to go down there and it was a very special
moment to be so close to hell.

Carsten: Thank you for your interest
this evening and I would say we just begin. This is me in the tender
age of 15 years and I was already obsessed with volcanoes. I bugged
my parents until they went with me to Etna in Sicily. When I looked
in the big fucina grande I was kind of lost. I changed my life and I
got the desire to always climb down into these craters.

And it took me until '99 for my
ultimate volcano kick when I directed an expedition to Vanuatu into a
deep, live abyss was probably the most violent lava lake in the
world. It's about 1500 feet deep and it was a very special moment to
be so close to hell. You felt like directly on the magma chamber. You
felt the vibrations, the shocks. It was like a big washing machine
and a heavy gear. It was just amazing and bombs were flying around
you, so I got so addicted I always wanted to see the biggest lava
lake in the world.

And this is the travel I want to take
you on. I would take you now into the heart of Africa. Into the
Democratic Republic of Congo and worse, into the war-driven Kivu
Province. Now I will do an excursion to 2002. There was a big
eruption of Nyiragongo. 8 mile fissure opened and the lava lake
drained and flooded Goma City and 4500 houses were destroyed, 14
villages, 170 people lost their lives and we had 400,000 refugees, so
that means Nyiragongo is a real dangerous volcano and it has very
little monitoring because the Congolese, they love to recycle the
instruments of the scientists. There are solar panels and batteries.
All things they can use in a better way. A few parts of the city are
life threatening. Invisible gas springs become like natural traps for
kids and animals and this is strictly unmarked. You have these gas
traps filled with carbon dioxide. These are called mazukus. Even
worse are the dangers of the Lake Kivu. It's one of the world's
exploding lakes. There are only 3 of them and Lake Kivu is by far the
biggest. In its steps there are huge quantities of gases of carbon
dioxide and methane. Over half a billion tons are stored there and an
earthquake or a volcanic eruption might destroy the equilibrium and
it could pop up like a shaken bottle of carbonated water. So, it's
very, very dangerous. So you could fear tsunamis or the people-- 2
million people living around there could suffocate of carbon dioxide.
A limnic catastrophe of the lake would be really unimaginable. It
happens every thousand years, every millennium, that all life is
extinct around that lake.

But the surrounding of the volcano is
very fertile, so you find almost everything you can imagine; wood,
fruits, all sorts of vegetables. People already cut the wood in the
fields and then this is transported down with very strange wooden
bikes. They are called tshukudus and they are loaded up to 1500
pounds. And so they race down these gentle slopes of these volcanoes
and provide the markets with all you can imagine. So, A tshukudu can
do quite a good living. It's like a truck driver in our society. They
carry down everything like this charcoal. It's a wanted commodity in
Goma because they cook with it, but there are uncounted illegal
charcoal kiln in the forest and it's an immediate threat to the trees
down there. Despite, there are these layers of methane in the depths
of the lake so if that would be better organized, you could directly
save the mountain gorillas living around these volcanoes because
these forests are the last wild remaining areas where these mountain
gorillas survive.

Here you see the giant flanks of this
volcano. It's a huge caldera with a diameter of 3 quarters of a mile.
These are the 1st views for us down there to the biggest lava lake so
we have to make our thoughts how we get down there, but 1st we have
to get up there. So, Nyiragongo is more than 11,000 feet high and we
had to carry a lot. We have to carry everything up there; water,
food, scientific gear, climbing gear. So we needed 107 porters to do
all that. They were very happy. For them it's a great opportunity and
they were amazing. They could do, in a day, a months salary so these
jobs were really seeked by the porters. And we had, of course, guards
because this is kind of a conflict area and the mountain is always
taken again by rebels and it happened short after our expedition that
the mountain was taken by the rebels again and I think it's still not
freed. I mean, the national park doesn't have control over it and
more than 130 rangers have been killed in the last 15 years. So, it's
a big problem. But our porters have been in a very good mood up to
the top where it was quite cold. It's getting down to freezing
temperatures because of the altitude and then you see, in the first
moment, not very much.

I mean, everything is filled up with
gas and we thought, Well, that's not a nice surprise. I expected to
see something glowing and whatever, but in the night you realize,
Well, there's more behind that curtain of steam and organic smoke.
And then it opens and then you see it's like a giant theater. You see
this incredible lava lake illuminating the steep walls of that
caldera and we built up our base camp on the summit. This is our
cooking tent. Always was this incredible view down there and it's
always changing the surface of that lava lake so it's a really
incredible spectacle.

This is Ken Sims our volcanologist and
he was a former mountain guide and he was doing all the rope work to
get down there. We looked to the 1st terrace, which is only a small
relict. The 2nd one was much bigger and the 3rd one was a lava lake
situated in the midst. And this is where we aim to. We wanted to stay
there one week. The scientists had a lot of experiments lined up and
here we constructed Tyrolean to get all the scientific gear down
there. So, we made a campsite on the 2nd terrace which had its
advantages because it had ground heating. It was quite warm and very
pleasant compared to the summit and, of course, we were closer to the
lava lake. So it was absolutely mesmerizing. So I knew that would be
my home for the next week and I was really happy to finally be so
close to the volcanism and we observed this kind of miniature plate
tectonics in the lake, so it was really amazing just to observe
what's going on. The hottest lava in the world, 2400 degree
Fahrenheit. That's probably the reason why this lava lake is so big.
And here the scientists are measuring the radon which comes from
really big taps from the magma chamber and has a decay rate of 3.8
days. So they can make very valuable analysis about the lava of this
volcano, but suddenly the scientists realized, Wow! There could be
overflows off that lava lake and it could flood the 3rd terrace and
it could flood quite hefty and you don't know exactly how stable
these cinder cones of that lava lake are. And that kind of a relative
way that their will to go down to the 3rd terrace. So, for me, there
were no doubts I want to go down there and that was my goal, but the
discussions came up and the scientists decided to go already after 1
day and I couldn't believe that so I have a little sequence with the
scientists.

Carsten on the radio: Well, I still
would like go down to the 3rd terrace and I just wonder what you are
up to and what your plans are.

Man: Probably won't be going down to
the 3rd terrace. Jesus, he really wants me to go down, doesn't he?

Man 2: I'm staying out of it.

Carsten: Well, you need a lot of
ingredients for a good volcano picture. You need good activity. You
need good visibility. You have to have patience and you have to have
to outsit the right situations.

Well, I had a big problem and you see,
I mean. It was really not a nice weather situation. I admit the
weather was really poor the 1st day. It was acid rain and you almost
couldn't breathe because that's the so-called rock, the volcanic
smoke. Usually you take gas masks, but if you are hard work like here
and you have to carry up equipment you can't breathe through the gas
mask all the time because of the resistance. But everyone left after
that 1 day and even my friend and assistant, he became ill and had to
go up, so I had no other choice than to stay down there. Well, and I
had nothing better to do than to photograph myself. But then I looked
up and looked at this beautiful kind of vague lit clouds in the
moonlight and I thought, Well, this is wonderful to have the whole
crater for myself. But these were my only buddies down there. Two
white necked ravens and they immediately stole my food when they
realized my tent was open, but I was glad for them because otherwise
it's kind of a death zone. Insects fly in the night to the lava lake
attracted by the light and then they burn somehow their wings and
then they fall down. Everything is covered by dead animals.

So the next day I climbed up to the 1st
terrace to discuss with Ken.

Voiceover: Unwilling to take the risk
himself, Ken asks Carsten to collect the 0H sample from the 3rd
terrace. They will need to set two lines. One to get in, the other
one to get out if the lava overflows. Up on the summit, Ken will spot
the levels of the lava for the climbers on the final terrace who
can't see the surface of the lake themselves because they are below
it.

Ken: Do you see him? The activity is
over on your side of the wall there. He's going back down. Whoa! Good
job. Good job.

Carsten on the radio: It's incredible.
I love it. I love it. I love it.

Carsten: I have been very, very lucky
as you saw in the film. We climbed down to the 3rd terrace. That's
the view if you are down on the 3rd terrace. Actually you can't see
into the lava lake up there so it's kind of mandatory that you have
to climb that cinder cone. And then you have these surprises because
there's something like and infra-sound and it shakes your whole body,
but you can't listen to it. It's very, very strange. I have never
experienced that before. I imagine the whole crater is like a loud
speaker and the membrane is the lava lake and if there are big bursts
of gas you get the kind of resonance and it shakes your body. So
very, very strange and you feel tiny, tiny, tiny. I mean, you see
here my friend on the cinder cone and the lava lake is huge compared
to that and the energy going away from that lava lake is unbelievable
and hard to imagine. So it's a huge energy source and there are these
gas bubbles coming out of that lake and ripping apart this liquid
stone. Bubbles maybe 80 feet high and one day later Ken came really
down and brought us the thermal suit. I was testing it first. I have
to say these thermal suits are quite uncomfortable because they are
insulating. It's very warm even if it's not warm outside, and you
have a very restricted view, so very limited. So if there is lava
flow or if bombs are flying it's quite dangerous, but you won't
believe the next day, although Ken came down to the 3rd terrace,
actually that's him here on the top of the cinder cone and he
probably won't forget that for his life. I would have loved to stay a
much longer time. Unfortunately, we were restricted and we had to go
up again and made it up to the 2nd terrace to all these kind of very
difficult parts with the 2nd terrace taking apart and there's a lot
of rock fall. This is my last picture of this nasty volcanic smoke
walk as beautiful as it can be.

Carsten Peter: Inside the Nyiragongo Volcano

A fearless explorer and photographer, Carsten Peter takes a daring journey to capture images of the largest lava lake on Earth.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.